The following is a partial timeline of Crayola's history. It covers the Crayola brand of marking utensils, as well as the history of Binney & Smith, the company that created the brand and is currently a subsidiary of Hallmark Cards known as Crayola LLC.

1885: Joseph Binney retires; Edwin and C. Harold Smith, form a partnership and call their company Binney & Smith. Early products include red oxidepigment used in barn paint and carbon black used for cartires. During this time, Binney & Smith took an active role in the development and production of carbon black from natural gas, after natural gas deposits were found throughout Pennsylvania.

1902: "Binney & Smith Company" is formed September 30, in Easton, Pennsylvania, and serves as general distributor for several carbon black producers, introducing Carbon black to other countries. This also marks their first crayon product, the industry crayon "Staonal" in black. This crayon precedes the Crayola brand by a full year and still exists to this year.

1904: Binney & Smith wins the Gold Medal during the April 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. Their entry was actually for their An-Du-Septic dustless chalk, but it was the foundation of their "Gold Medal" packaging in which they featured the gold medal on the front of their crayon boxes for the next 50 or so years. Given that this award wasn't given out until April 1904 and Crayola had been selling since August 1903, it is a misconception that the famous box shown on the postage stamp and in numerous other historical articles and web pages is "the" actual first design of their Crayola boxes because the box shown in all of those pictures has that Gold Medal on the front.

1905: Binney redesigns their 8-color assortment to use the famous "Gold Medal" label and design. They also renamed the box to be the No. 8, following and earlier such introduction by the Franklin Mfg. Co. for their Rainbow line of crayons. This first and only Gold Medal box used the Eagle side of the Gold Medal and was the only assortment size to use this side of the medal as it was changed to the other side before they expanded the line to other assortment sizes in 1910. This also marks the year that they introduced Spectra, a pastel crayon line.

1908: Binney & Smith partnered with Littlefield Maps to make a special color assortment of their Rubens-Crayola No. 12 box with special Biblical colors pasted on the back to accommodate church work on their Old Testament maps.

1909: Binney & Smith launched their Durel line of pressed crayons

1910:

Binney & Smith expands their Gold Medal line to include the debut of their No. 16 box (which also followed an earlier debut of a 16-color assortment by Franklin Mfg. Co.). They also discontinued many of their original boxes in favor of standardizing more to this Gold Medal line.

1911: Binney & Smith launch their Cerola brand of crayons targeted toward the lower end quality but more affordable markets

1912: Binney & Smith's carbon black is first used on tires to make black tires. They also launched their Cerata brand of crayons.

1913: Marks the launch of the Little Folks outfit boxes (Nos. 25 & 50) along with a Picture Tracer box.

1915: The Boston crayon line debuts. This also marks the discontinuation of the No. 101 assortment box that contained Gold, Silver and Copper crayon colors. While Gold and Silver was available as a bulk purchase, these three original colors couldn't be found on a retail assortment box for the next 30 years. Copper goes away until 1958.

1919: The design of the their Gold Medal boxes is changed to drop the Paris reference. They also launch their No. 88 8-color tins.

1920: Perma Pressed Sharpenable Fine Art Crayons are added to the growing product line, which also includes new Artista brand paints.

1999: For the third time in Crayola history a crayon is renamed because of social concerns. Indian red becomes "chestnut" because teachers reported that schoolchildren often wrongly perceived the color to be the skin color of Native Americans. The name in fact did not refer to Native Americans, but to a pigment produced in India and used in oil paints. Crayola introduces Crayons with Glitter.

2000:

Another crayon color—Thistle—is retired into the Crayola Hall of Fame, totaling 45 retired colors and replaced by newcomer Indigo. There are still 120 colors available.

On January 1, Binney & Smith is renamed to Crayola LLC, to improve Crayola branding as part of Hallmark.

Crayola introduces Silly Scents and True To Life Crayons.

2008:

The Crayola 18 pack vibrant set of Twistable Colored Pencils is released.

The Crayola 64 pack of short colored pencils is released.

2009:

Crayola introduces Extreme Twistables Colors.

The Crayola 30 pack of Twistable Colored Pencils is released.

2011:

The Crayola Solar Farm is completed and included more than 30,000 solar panels producing 3 megawatts of electricity. The solar panels generate enough electricity to produce 1 billion crayons and 500 million markers per year.